The Unsuitablog

A few years ago, possibly in 2004, I visited the Eden Project; a mixture of perfectly tended meadows, terraces and exotic planting, topped off by a pair of impressive plastic “biomes” (they were building the third at the time), all in the setting of an abandoned clay pit in Cornwall, England. My family took home some wonderful memories from that day — it was steaming hot, so much so that the Tropical Biome had to be fully vented; my younger daughter had endless fun running around the mazes and gawping at the giant bee; my older daughter discovered what it was like to be soaked in a tropical mist.

Spin forwards four years, and something has gone bad in Eden — they are allowing themselves to be used as a platform for every major car company to do a spot of greenwashing. What better place to pretend you have the interests of the planet at heart than at the Eden Project, that bastion of sustainable tourism and ecological education for all generations? What better place to show that cars are not bad things — they are just misunderstood.

The official blurb makes for deeply uncomfortable reading:

Why a car show at the Eden Project? 
 
Love them or hate them, cars are not going away. But road transport accounts for a fifth of our carbon dioxide emissions in the UK, so it’s time to transform the way we buy and use them.
 
The good news is that we can reduce road transport carbon dioxide emissions by a massive 80% by 2050 if we start buying the right vehicles now and take our old bangers off the roads. The technology is out there and our Sexy Green Car Show brings it to you.

You can read this in one of two ways: first, that there is a general acceptance that car transport is not going away for a long time, so we need to make the best of the situation we have; second, that car transport is a good thing, and it can be made even better if it is made greener. The difference is subtle, but is important.

The first explanation is realistic — it accepts that there will be a need for some car transport, in some places for quite a while until alternatives are found or, more importantly, people stop having the need to travel so much. The second explanation is straight out of the greenwashing guide, written by the automotive giants. Yes, maybe individual vehicle emissions can reduce by 80% in 42 years (not that that is anything like sufficient), but the car companies are exploiting huge markets in Asia and South America, plus pushing to ensure car transport is the only option for travel in the industrial West: net transport emissions are unlikely to go down at all, regardless of how “green” individual vehicles are.

The second explanation is the true meaning of the Sexy Green Car Show. Take a look at the roster of companies showing at the event:

All the major manufacturers will be flaunting their newest, greenest models including Ford, Peugeot, Citroën, Fiat, Volkswagen, SEAT, Honda, Axon, Lotus, Saab and Morgan. Vectrix’s electric motorcycle will also be on show, and the hydrogen-powered Morgan LIFE car will make its first public appearance in this country.

This is a trade event, designed to make car manufacturers look good, while still continuing their effortless plundering of the planet’s diminishing natural assets. Eden Project, you have well and truly been taken for a ride.

How green is your telecommunications company? Can it match us? AT&T lead the world in compassion and environmental nurturing through four main areas of its business. 

1. Supplying military equipment:

AT&T is an official provider of personal telecommunications services for all five branches of U. S. military at 529 military bases worldwide and on 200 U. S. Navy ships afloat through contracts with AAFES, NEXCOM, MCCS and the Coast Guard Exchange.  (from here)

2. Spying on the public:

Mark Klein, a former technician who worked for AT&T for 22 years, provided three technical documents, totaling 140 pages, to the EFF and to The New York Times, which first reported last December that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on citizens’ phone calls without obtaining warrants.

AT&T built a secret room in its San Francisco switching station that funnels internet traffic data from AT&T Worldnet dialup customers and traffic from AT&T’s massive internet backbone to the NSA, according to a statement from Klein. 

3. Polluting waterways:

AT&T Corp. agreed to a $25 million settlement of a lawsuitalleging that the company risked polluting ground water with toxicchemicals by failing to properly test and repair hundreds of underground storage tanks for gasoline and diesel fuel, California officials said Tuesday. (from here)

4. Recycling cellphones:

When you donate your used cell phones to Cell Phones for Soldiers, your phones are either reconditioned and reused — or they’re disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. Best of all, the proceeds provide free phone cards for U.S. military families.

You can celebrate Earth Day every day. Run a cell phone donation drive in your community — at your office, school, apartment building or place of worship.

Well, that does it for me! Recycling cellphones is such a great thing that I’m just going to forgive AT&T for being a key part of the military-industrial complex, and using their corporate leverage to ensure that their worst secrets go untold (Don Rumsfeld was right when he talked about “unknown unknowns”).

I’m not going to comment on the rights or wrongs of Cell Phones for Soldiers — soldiers are human too (even though their leaders clearly aren’t) so want to talk to their families — but why are AT&T making such a big deal about their recycling drive, touting it as their Earth Day effort? It’s a classic piece of greenwashing designed to make this corporate behemoth look good as they do so much bad stuff.

The Unsuitablog received this from an AT&T employee recently:

AT&T touts its goal to double the number of cellphones recycled  through its stores in 2008, while refusing to provide bins in its offices for employees to recycle non-business paper (i.e. newspapers),  aluminum and plastic. The reason they don’t? They say it is too  expensive. The cellphone recycling press release touts how easy it is  to “go green for earth day”, but the company doesn’t follow through in  other areas. They do provide bins for office paper, but that is only  to protect customer and corporate data; I’ve been yelled at for  putting newspaper in there. My office used to have bins for  recyclables, but they were removed in the interest of “cost cutting”.

When I asked if there were any other examples of environmental hypocrisy, this nugget of information followed:

We are expected to leave our computers on overnight so that “updates can download”. They want us to logout and leave Windows at the login screen, and turn our monitors off (not let them go to sleep; turn them off). As a corporate laptop user, I’m not supposed to leave the laptop on overnight, since I have to lock it up. To me, that pretty much indicates that the necessary updates can download just fine in the background as I’m working on other things.

As for corporate excess, their environmental controls policy really needs work. In the summer, the internal temperature is set to 68. In the winter, it’s 78. It is not uncommon for people to wear coats at their desks during the summer and having to use fans (to no avail) in the winter.

So there’s a company acting both globally (bad) and locally (bad). AT&T, welcome to the Greenwashing Elite!

---

N.B. If you have any examples of corporate greenwashing then The Unsuitablog welcomes them. All sources will be kept anonymous upon request. Just e-mail news@unsuitablog.com.

So, as I suspected all along; according to an article in todays Independent, the public don’t support “green” taxes.

More than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change, according to a new poll.  

Wow! What a revelation: people don’t want to pay money to save the planet. For some bizarre reason the mainstream environmental movement still think that money and the planet mix, and that if they can only persuade governemnts to impose taxes to change behaviour then everything will get better. For instance:

It’s tax time – time to fight global warming and save yourself some green at the same time.

Federal, state, and local governments offer a range of tax incentives, grants, and loans that will help you save energy, fight global warming, reduce your energy bills, and let you keep more green in your wallet after Tax Day comes around.

That’s our old friends The Sierra Club, talking up the “green dollar”.

Increasing taxes on fossil fuels is an essential weapon in the Government’s armoury for tackling climate change. And if Alistair Darling used these extra taxes to cut those on people and jobs, it would be extremely popular too. It’s time the Treasury played its full part in delivering a low-carbon economy.

Friends of the Earth this time.

It’s a funny subject, because governments are loathe to impose punative taxation on environmentally damaging activities — well, that would mean taxing everything, really — which would seem to suggest that “green” taxes are actually a good thing for the environment. Sure, a 100% increase in fuel duty might make people think twice about buying fuel, but it would also be a guaranteed vote loser. In an age of apparent environmental awareness, why should that be?

The simple fact is that the whole of civilization is geared towards making money.

Who wouldn’t complain if someone tried to take it away from you — for environmental reasons or not. The environmental mainstream are terminally stuck in a mindset that says it is possible to make things better by working within the system — imposing “green” taxes, making business “greener”, buying “green” products — the very system that is nothing without economic growth.

Fools!

Back to the Independent article:

The results of the poll by Opinium, a leading research company, indicate that maintaining popular support for green policies may be a difficult act to pull off, and attempts in the future to curb car use and publicly fund investment in renewable resources will prove deeply unpopular.

That’s not news — that’s just the way things are in this consumption culture.

There are few things more entertaining than when two different businesses, both loaded with money, battle it out for supremacy , with the only losers being one or other industry. This particular battle is taking place between the multi-millionaire (billionaire) stable owners of Newmarket, in the English Midlands, and the air industry, led by National Air Traffic Services, a recently privatised air infrastructure business. It has become a turf war…literally.

From the point of view of the avid greenwash spotter, anything that promises to dent the imperialism of the air industry has got to be good news; yet the racing industry is run by people who spend their lives dashing from one international stable to another — by plane, of course — only interspersed by journeys in their leather and burnished walnut lined Range Rovers to and from large lunches where they discuss how much more money they can make.

Surprisingly, I don’t have any sympathy for either side. Here is the Observer newspaper taking up the hilarious story:

Plans that would see up to 33 planes an hour, circling over a major horse breeding area, threaten to drive away the world’s top stud owners, including the ruler of oil-rich Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, and Kirsten Rausing, the Tetra Pak heiress.

Owners and trainers have hired aviation and planning law expert John Steel, QC, to force the National Air Traffic Services (Nats), the UK’s leading air-traffic management company, to rethink its proposals, which they say could result in the death of Newmarket as headquarters of the racing industry.

‘The proposed stacking is right over the top of the horse-breeding area,’ said Alastair Watson, chairman of the Newmarket Stud Farmers Association and manager of Rausing’s Lanwades stud. ‘Breeders have chosen the area for its quiet environs. There is obviously the possibility of them moving away.’

An urgent meeting to discuss the proposals was attended by representatives from Sheikh Mohammed’s stud, as well as from the Newmarket Stud Farmers’ Association, the National Stud, the Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association and Tattersalls, the UK’s leading bloodstock auctioneers. ‘Brood mares come from around the world to be covered here. It could really knock confidence,’ said Louise Kemble, chief executive of the breeders’ association.

Oh, how I laughed!

Ever get the feeling you’ve been had? It’s an iconic quote from a punk legend, but as with all great sayings, it can be applied in many different places. This is one example: the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry talking shop if ever there was one and, like the ineffectual light-green environmental groups who “fight” for changes to government policy and send out gleeful press releases whenever a corporation promises to behave itself, the RSPO are actually making things far worse than if the public were left to their own devices. Sustainable palm oil is simply snake oil in a clever diguise: it doesn’t exist and it never will do.

Here’s how it works.

1) As a group of big businesses whose primary interest is to ensure the expansion of the lucrative palm oil industry — retailers, traders, processors, growers, investors; that sort of thing — set up a shell organisation that claims it is going to make the industry “sustainable”.

2) Call in some gullible (yes, I said “gullible”) NGOs and environmentalists and say that they can have a seat on this august, influential body if they allow business to continue as before — but they will be allowed to suggest changes to the industry providing it doesn’t affect the business model.

3) Repeatedly announce to the world, through member companies such as Sainsburys and Unilever, that agreements are being reached and work is moving on swiftly to make plantations sustainable, but that we have to give them time because this is a tough job, and there are so many products that contain this oil it is just “impossible” to do this any other way.

 4) Do almost nothing for years while counting the massive profit that has been made from cheap oil being grown on recently deforested land using cheap labour.

5) After a few years say that the there are so many plantations that no more deforestation has to take place. Meanwhile the South East Asian rainforest has ceased to exist, carbon levels through wood and peat burning have boosted the greenhouse effect, and people have still not realised they have been well and truly greenwashed.

Alternatively, you could, like Meridian Foods, just take palm oil out of your products until it is sustainably produced. I’m not in the habit of promoting companies, but you have to give them credit as they didn’t even publicise the change.

The RSPO have an impressive roster of members, but it’s the board that matters, so here is their board membership, in full:

President:
Unilever : Jan Kees Vis (massive food multinational)

Vice-President I:
WWF Malaysia : Darrel Arthur Webber (NGO — history of corporate partnerships)
 
Vice-President II:
Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (GAPKI) : Derom Bangun (growers and producers trade body)
 
Vice-President III:
Malaysian Palm Oil Association : Mamat Salleh (growers and producers trade body)
 
Vice-President IV:
New Britain Palm Oil Limited : Simon Lord (Papua New Guinea’s largest oil palm plantation and milling operator)
 
Treasurer:
Aarhus Karlshamn UK : Ian McIntosh (Palm Oil trade “solutions” company)
 
Members:
 
Federation of Migros Cooperatives : Robert Keller
IOI Group (Malaysia/Netherlands) : Don Grubba
Cadbury Schweppes plc : Tony Lass
WWF-Indonesia : Fitrian Ardiansyah
Oxfam International : Johan Verburg
Sawit Watch : Rudy Lumuru
HSBC Bank Malaysia Berhad : Paul Norton
FELDA : Mohd Nor Kailany
Co-operative Insurance Society : Samantha Lacey

You will notice that there is only one organisation represented on the board management that has any interest in ensuring the palm oil becomes sustainable, and that organisation is one of the most business-friendly NGOs in the world. Overall, NGOs and small growers are outnumbered three to one on the board. They will always lose in voting.

Add to this their pathetic “aspirations” as a body:

RSPO is an association created by organisations carrying out their activities in and around the entire supply chain for palm oil to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil through co-operation within the supply chain and open dialogue with its stakeholders.

In other words, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is an industry body that has absolutely no intention of producing or using sustainable palm oil all the time there is more profit to be made from the type that comprises 100% of all palm oil currently being produced. Clearly they also have no intention of scrapping the use of palm oil all the time it is unsustainable.

*** UPDATE ***

A post in Tempo Magazine Indonesia (via the Dear Kitty Blog) has justified my decision to attack the RSPO:

Novi Hardianto, manager of the habitat program at the Center for Orangutan Protection (COP) said on Thursday last week (4/9) that two big palm oil companies, IOI Group and Agro Group, have cut down forests that were known to be the habitat of orangutan.

This was despite the fact that these forests were included in the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Not content with members refusing to keep their word, they somehow try to smooth it over in this appalling example of sycophancy:

Meanwhile, RSPO spokesperson Desi Kusmadewi said that RSPO would check out the area mentioned by Greenpeace.

“If it is true, we will give chance for the company to repair what they have done first before being removed from RSPO,” said Desi.

Repair! How can you repair the destruction of pristine ancient rainforest?!

The rest of the article makes for equally depressing reading, putting the lie to the claim that there can ever be such a thing as “sustainable” tropical forestry where governments and corporations are involved.

The results of a fascinating survey have just been released by the PR company Chatsworth Communications, which show clearly that Britain’s journalists, bloggers and other “opinion formers” are not being fooled by the tide of greenwash slopping over the nation’s shores. The press release states:

The results reveal an increasing cynicism as to whether UK business will ever aim for anything more than ‘greenwash’ without clear leadership and legislation from the government on environmental issues.

Nick Murray-Leslie, Chatsworth, comments: “The general public is much more aware of both the issue and the role big business has to play. As a result they are increasingly scrutinising businesses’ sustainability programmes. It should be every company’s priority to make sure they communicate honestly and effectively.

“Supermarkets continue to come under particular scrutiny because of their prominence in our day to day life. Our findings shown that the brands with the most well-publicised sustainability campaigns are also thought of as green washers, so the correlation between investment in publicity and a positive perception by the public does not necessarily always apply.”

This is really enlightening news — the message of The Unsuitablog and the many other sources of information that are helping expose greenwash is most certainly getting through. It also shows that perhaps the public aren’t so taken in by faux-green messages because the stark environmental warnings of the last few years are also getting through.

Some of the comments made with reference to certain companies most certainly echo this site’s sentiments; three of those below have already been featured here:

Let’s keep the ball rolling, and keep greenwashing out of society.

Wasn’t it only six short days ago that President Bush stood before the nation and called for the halt of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025? Then why is the federal government, led by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), planning to power Western cities with a new utility grid that bypasses renewable energy and that incentivizes more coal, oil and natural gas production? 

Called the West-Wide Energy Corridors Process, the reality of this plan is that it’s little more than a scheme to build nearly 6,000 miles of “corridors” through nearly 3 million acres of public lands, including national parks and national monuments. Averaging over 2/3 a mile wide and capable of holding up to 35 natural gas pipelines, these corridors will have massive and long-term effects on public lands.

During a congressional hearing last week, energy experts and county, state, and tribal officials testified against the plan and criticized the DOE for not consulting with local stakeholders when designating the corridors. Representative Raúl Grijalva said that on a map the corridors looked like “giant extension cords to existing coal sources.”

How can we realistically lower greenhouse emissions if we continue to burn coal and other fossil fuels? Lowering emissions requires a serious commitment to the development and sustainability of renewable energy, but the proposed corridors leave renewables without access to the grid. The feds needs to go back and consult with local and tribal officials, provide access to renewable energy and protect our public lands.

This guest article was written for The Unsuitablog by James Navarro of the Wilderness Society.

I’ve had enough of the sanctinomious, corporate marketing of Earth Day, and it looks as though a group in Toronto have had enough too. The Toronto Climate Campaign ran an event on Sunday which reflected almost exactly what I wrote earlier:

In April, 1970, the environmental movement burst onto the political stage with one of the largest grassroots demonstrations ever seen. Between 20 and 25 million people, mostly in the United States, answered the call on the first Earth Day. Event organizers were shocked at the response and marveled at the crowd that drew from every constituency: students and seniors; inner cities and small towns; faith groups and hippies. 

Over the years, corporations began to fund and sponsor Earth Day events, some out of sincere interest, more out of desire to buy “green” credentials. This shifted the emphasis from public rallying to put pressure on politicians and policy makers, to predominantly innocuous and symbolic events. Large scale, interconnected mobilizations were out. Decentralized photo-ops were in. The unfortunate result was, most activists began to ignore Earth Day.

Which is why I will be doing nothing different today. In fact, what I will be doing is what I have been doing every day for years — trying to make my own life as sustainable as possible, while also trying to generate change at all levels.

---

I said I would probably get more self-promoting bandwagon e-mails between my last article and today, and so I did. Here is a choice selection, with the pertinant points highlighted. Bear in mind that these are from people who purport to be “green” but somehow can’t help selling stuff:

Why You Need a Plastic Bag Ball

OSSINING, N.Y. (April 15, 2008)-Boredom has lent itself to building balls of rubber bands, and street fairs across America have begged the question, “Can you guess how many jellybeans are in this jar?” As we near Earth Day on April 22, Eco-Bags Products, Inc. is asking green-minded citizens to collect 1,000 plastic bags and build PLASTIC BAG BALLS, to visualize and understand the impact on our planet. Earth Day celebrators are encouraged to document their ball builds and submit photos or video to the community blog My Greenest Hour. Up to ten participants who demonstrate the most environmental prowess will receive one ECOBAG® to carry along on their next grocery trip.

(The full e-mail contained 9 separate mentions of their registered trademarked, incorporated product)

GREENOPIA COMES TO NEW YORK!

New York, NY (April 21, 2008) – A must-have on the West Coast has finally arrived in New York just in time for Earth Day:  Welcome the first edition of Greenopia New York City, a guidebook to green businesses in all five boroughs – from car services and hotels, to nail salons and burial services.  Hitting bookshelves this week, Greenopia New York City makes living an eco-friendly life in the Big Apple easier than ever! 

Featuring more than 1,300 listings of local green businesses and resources, Greenopia New York City is sold online at Greenopia.com, as well as at Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods, Macy’s and other area bookstores and specialty retailers. 

The book’s suggested retail price is $17.95.

(Just blatant marketing)

Low Carbon Diet Takes Bite out of Global Warming: Earth Day event and online calculator lower carbon footprint of America’s favorite foods

Experts available:

* Chefs on Bon Appétit’s low carbon eating strategy, from menus to operations management. Celebrity chefs also available.
* Spokespersons from company headquarters, local cafes, and the sustainable food movement

Where:        

* Bon Appétit Management Company cafes in 28 states and major metro areas including: Chicago, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Austin, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Portland, Seattle, and Boston. 
* Visit a cafe in your area on April 22nd to report on the action on Low Carbon Diet day’s low carbon meals, educational activities, and diners’ reactions to the event.

(I wonder why they are asking you to visit their cafes?)

---

So have fun this Earth Day. See how much more hypocrisy and marketing you can spot. Sent it to news@theunsuitablog.com and I reckon there is a good chance it’ll be published!

I sometimes get the feeling I’m shooting fish in a barrel, writing this blog — not that I would ever shoot a fish — with the targets getting easier and easier to pick off. This is never so true as with the “environmental” charities that huddle up, all cosily, with business in the vain attempt to get them to play nicely.

They really don’t get it — business doesn’t want to “play nicely”, business wants to do business, and will not do business if it doesn’t make a profit. In order to make a profit the business must get more more out of a process than it puts in; and if you are a manufacturer or a producer of raw materials then that extra either comes from cheap labour or the extraction of something you didn’t have before — like oil or timber. If you are a retailer or an investment bank, the profit you gain is dependent on selling something for a greater value than you bought it — you are dependent on the manufacturer or producer of raw materials having something you can resell at a profit, so they must reduce their costs as much as possible. In order for these costs to be reduced they must cut corners, so they treat workers badly; pollute the land, water and atmosphere; use their commercial muscle to ensure they don’t have legislation to comply with…and so on. If you are an advertiser or PR company, your job is to make all these companies look good.

In short, business is unsustainable, at all levels.

If you are the Nature Conservancy, one of the largest and most respected environmental charities in the world, then it would make sense not to work with profit making businesses, especially not the most damaging of them…you know, companies like Alcoa, BP and Cargill — really, really bad companies.

Actually, if you are the Nature Conservancy, you say the following:

The Nature Conservancy works with the business community to find common ground between conservation and industry. We accept their financial and land donations, engage in cause-related marketing, foster direct conservation action, and participate in event sponsorship.

As you can see, they really think there is common ground between business and conservation, and will happily provide branding for any company that pretends they are doing good things. They are good enough to provide a list of these companies — here are some really nasty ones:

Alcoa — massive polluter and consumer of energy
American Electric Power — coal burning (73%) electricity producer
Bank of America — will invest in anything, regardless of impact
BP — oil giant and greenwasher supreme
Cargill — food giant, GMO user on massive scale
Caterpillar — provides military equipment to repressive regimes

And many more, including Monsanto, Proctor & Gamble and Georgia-Pacific. All of the nasty companies The Nature Conservancy have partnered with continue to be nasty — but look great, because of their links with TNC.

In fact the history of the Nature Conservancy shows that they were only able to grow as they did in the 1960s because of a cash injection from Ford Motors, which allowed them to employ an IBM executive as their first President. Now please humour me and read this web page about their cosy relationship with General Motors, and tell me if I am being paranoid:

http://www.nature.org/joinanddonate/corporatepartnerships/partnership/generalmotors.html

I think I need to lie down…

 

On the day China was announced as the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide* (well, about as official as we can get at the moment) Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK announced that he was going to focus on just one thing — and I’m not surprised considering how important this thing is:

“Next month’s University of California report warns that unless China radically changes its energy policies, its increases in greenhouse gases will be several times larger than the cuts in emissions being made by rich nations under the Kyoto Protocol.”

Sorry? Did I get that wrong? Oh, it isn’t the changing global climate — the event that now guarantees to cause irreversible ecological damage that will affect us dramatically — that Gordon Brown is focusing on; it is the economic climate. Silly me. I do forget sometimes that if we don’t all go to the shops to buy piles of crap, fly off on sunny vacations and keep using more and more natural resources to ensure that the global economy keeps on growing then we are doomed! Doomed to what, exactly?

Here’s what Gordon actually said:

“Every day that I wake up is about keeping this economy moving forward, keeping stability in the economy and keeping growth…we will do everything in our power to keep the economy moving forward”

To everyone who has an inkling of knowledge about both ecology and economics, this statement reeks of a complete disregard for climatic stability, indeed you could just substitute “global warming” for “economy” and you would get a pretty accurate rendition of what all Western governments, and those non-Western governments that have adopted the growth-lust of the West, are doing to the planet:

“The problem is that growth has to come from somewhere, and it can either come from some artificially created value, such as property prices, which could collapse at any time, or some resource, such as oil, coal, cropland, rock or metal, that is continually being used at an increasing rate. In short, if companies do not accelerate their use of resources then the global economy will not be able to carry on as it is. The economy is hell-bent on consuming the Earth’s finite resources in order to survive.”

(from http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/17630)

Next time you hear Gordon Brown mention the environment, climate change or anything else vaguely green, just ignore him: he is just another cretin who thinks that money is more important than life.

---

*This is what I said in 2006: “China has overtaken the USA in absolute numbers of televisions and refrigerators, but with a population 4 times higher, the per capita use is still well below that of the USA for these, pretty representative, items. China’s total carbon emissions have just exceeded (as of 2006) those of the USA.”